Download Europe: 500 to 401 BC

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Europe: 500 to 401 B.C.
∗
Jack E. Maxeld
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1 EUROPE
Back to Europe 600 to 501 B.C.1
1.1 SOUTHERN EUROPE
1.1.1 EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS
With the ultimate Greek victory over the Persians, many Mediterranean islands, including Rhodes and the
Cyclades, now became dependents of Athens. Even the Etruscan held island of Lemnos fell to Athenian
control in that period. At the end of the century, however, Rhodes pulled away, forming its own confederacy
of three city-states. (Ref. 382 )
1.1.2 GREECE (THE 2ND CENTER OF CIVILIZATION)
In the rst half of the century the city-states of Greece were occupied with continuous warfare with Persia with
the rst Persian attack coming in 490 B.C. by sea. In 480 B.C. there was the great battle of Thermophylae
and a concurrent sea battle at Salamis in which Xerxes was defeated. Between 478 and 477 Athens organized
the Delian League as a defense against future imperialism, with members being the Aegean coast and island
allies, with headquarters at Delos, but with Athens as the leader. These Athenian imperialistic policies were
engineered by Cimon, aristocratic successor of Themistocles. The Perisan wars ended about 449 B.C. as the
Persian Empire deteriorated and most of the Greek cities, even those on the coast of Asia Minor and the
Black Sea, became free.
The key to Athens' extraordinary accomplishments in the rst half of this century lay in her eet, which
maintained control of the Aegean and allowed goods from the eastern Mediterranean to enter through the
port of Piraeus. The eet thus not only carried the war across the Aegean to help liberate the Greek cities
there, but also allowed foreign contact, thus bringing new ideas and concepts, all of which set the stage
for cultural creativity. In this context we must not forget that behind all the shipping and trade was the
necessity for Greece to import food. The life-line demanded grain, even though this 5th century B.C. did
see the use of the domestic hen in almost every Athenian household and Greece now became the home of
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ne wines. Alfalfa was introduced by the Persians and subsequently the Greeks used this as horse fodder.
(Ref. 473 , 2224 )
Some modern writers have a tendency to idealize Greek life of this century and underplay some of
the less tasteful aspects of that civilization. In all Greek states abortion or abandonment of children was
permitted. Sparta arranged to prevent parents from knowing which were their own children and vice versa,
while the state decided whether or not any child would be permitted to live. Homosexuality was widespread
and publicly accepted. Athens had between 75,000 and 150,000 slaves representing some 25 to 35% of the
population. (Ref. 2135 , 2226 ) Finley (Ref. 2497 ) says that this number is purely a guess, and that while the
exact number of slaves is unknown, the important fact is that this was a slave society. Urbanism and the
great increase in wealth initiated capitalism and with the extension of full rights to the lower classes, free
hired labor could not meet the needs of the capitalists who, taking advantage of the almost continuous wars,
turned to ever larger scale slave labor.
As in Phoenicia, some Greek ports constructed in that time of low sea levels in the Mediterranean
are today below sea level. Medicine of that period in Greece was a mixture of religious mysticism with
some rational thought and procedures. Ascelepios was worshipped as the God of Healing and temples were
erected for him for that purpose over many centuries and were in present day terminology mixtures of
religious shrines and health spas. Alcaeon, possibly of this century, wrote a book Concerning Nature, which
may be the beginning of Greek medical literature, although only a few fragments survive. He established
a connection between the sensory organs and the brain, described the optic nerves and concluded that the
brain was the organ of the mind, therefore also responsible for thought and memory. A century later Aristotle
thought erroneously that the heart was the center of sensation. (Ref. 2138 , 2819 , 22410 , 12511 )
NOTE: Insert Map: GREECE DURING THE PERSIAN WARS
The period 475 - 429 B.C. has been called the "Golden Age of Pericles", the greatest ruler of Athens. In
view of the thousands of pages that have been written concerning ancient Greece, it is sometimes dicult
to keep things in proper perspective. Attica was actually a small area, with Sunium, the most distant point
from Athens, being only forty miles away (although admittedly this was a long walk, with only feet for
transportation). It was, however, a period of literature, plastic arts and the development of the foundations
of science. This was the time of Socrates, for whom philosophy was neither theology nor metaphysics but
ethics and politics with logic an introduction and a means. (Ref. 4712 ) It was the time of the historian
Herodotus (born about 484 B.C.) and in lonia the time of the great physician Hippocrates who fostered the
scientic approach to the treatment of disease as opposed to the priests' explanation that disease was the
result of anger of the gods. He was born on the island of Cos in 460 B.C. and became known eventually as
the "Father of Medicine". Protagoras (480 - 410 B.C.) was the chief proponent of the Sophists, who taught
the virtue of proper use of words and a method of verbal reasoning according to rules of argument whereby
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a man might hope to unravel all the mysteries of the universe. Their doctrines, including one that stated
that the law was a conspiracy of the weak against the strong, provided the oligarchy with justication for
violence and chicanery used to overthrow the democracy eventually (414 - 411 B.C.) Other philosophies
included that of the Cynics who cared only for virtue and relation of the soul to God with the world and
its learnings amounting to nothing; and the Stoics and Epicureans, using logic and rhetoric toward a similar
goal. Parmenides and Zeno, of the famous paradoxes, were Eleatics. (Ref. 4713 , 22114 )
This great age of Greece ended with the Peloponnesian War - a war of Sparta and her allies against Athens
and hers, which raged for thirty years beginning in 431 B.C. and which wasted all the power of Greece. Forty
years of aggressive Athenian imperialism and land grabbing activities had forced most mainland cities to
look to Sparta for leadership. Athens had control of the seas but commanded few mainland areas outside
of Attica, and it was obvious from the beginning that neither side could win. Then in 430 and 429 B.C.
a pestilence, which may have been a malignant form of scarlet fever15 , killed o 25% of the Athenian land
army. Thucydides said the infection had begun in Ethiopia, run into Egypt and Libya and most of Persia,
then through Piraeus to Athens, itself. The latter never fully recovered and lost the war to Sparta. A
peace which was supposed to last fty years was declared in 421 B.C. but Athens resumed expansionist
ambitions, this time with cruelty and slaughter in conquered islands. In reaction, the Persians nanced a
new Spartan navy commanded by Lysander and he completely defeated the Athenian eet at a great battle
at Aegospotami o the Hellespont in 405 B.C. The end came for Athens when Lysander then cut o the
grain supply line and laid siege to the city itself in 404 B.C.. The nal slaughter of the inhabitants matched
the previous plague of 430 - 429. Plato, a pupil of Socrates, grew up in the atmosphere of this exhausting
war. (Ref. 2816 , 14017 , 4718 )
NOTE: Insert 21: GREECE DURING THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
1.1.3 UPPER BALKANS
There was culture in Thrace and in the Greek colonies along the coast of the Black Sea. Many cities had
developed in Macedonia and by 450 B.C., under the reign of Alexander I, a veneer of Hellenic civilization
had appeared on the ruling classes of this area. (Ref. 21819 )
1.1.4 ITALY
Italy at this time was a motley of independent tribes and towns. There was still a northern Etruscan presence
near the Po River, with various cities there. Virgil, the Roman poet of part Etruscan origin, describes his
home of Mantua as composed of three races which apparently included Etruscans, Venetians and Umbrians,
the latter two being Indo-European Italic speakers.
In Etruria, itself, in addition to Tarquinii and Caere, which we discussed at some length in the last
chapters, we should now discuss Vulci, the city-state just north of Tarquinii.
In this 5th century B.C. it showed a marked Athenian inuence, with the Athenian "black-gure" pottery
ooding the community. No less than 40% of all Attic pottery that has been excavated in Etruria is from
Vulci. But this city's real claim to fame was its bronze-work, with multiple cast bronze statues which were
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in turn exported afar, including back to Greece. It is possible that Servius Tullius who ruled as King of
Rome after Tarquinius Priscus, was a Vulcentine with the original name of Mastarna. (Ref. 7520 ) Early
in the century the Etruscans, at the height of their power and allied with the Carthaginians, were at war
with the Sicilian Greeks of Syracuse and their King Hiero 1. (Please see also 1, B, this chapter), and in
a great naval battle o Cumae about 474 B.C. the Etruscan navy was destroyed. They were then forced
to withdraw from Campania and this secured the liberation of Rome from Etruscan control. Even then,
Cumae and Capua alike were still subjected to several years (430 - 423 B.C.) of ghting some hard-nosed
mountain, Italic-speaking tribes, the Samnites. It was the descendants of the latter who eventually forged a
new Campanian nation. In addition to the resistance of the Campanian Greeks the city-state of Caere was
further damaged by an attack by sixty Syracusan warships which plundered harbors on the mainland and
overran Elba and Corsica. (Ref. 7521 )
Up to this point Rome had actually only controlled an area of about nineteen by nineteen miles, but
they soon defeated the Sabines and expanded into their area. In spite of the smallness of Rome, this was
the period of the Roman Republic. At the beginning (494 B.C.) there was the rst "secession" in which
the plebes withdrew from Rome to form their own city, forcing concessions from the patricians such as the
right to have ocers of their own, tribunes and aediles. In the Republic there were four classes of citizens;
the Patricians, consisting of the superior clans which supplied Rome with generals, consuls and laws for ve
centuries (the Mantii, Valerii, Aemili, Cornelii, Fabii, Horatii, Claudii and Julii); the Equites, or business
men; the Plebs, or commons; and nally the Slaves. The Roman Senate consisted of 300 members made up
of clan heads from three basic tribes, although occasionally an Equite got into that body. As a result of a
political battle for better laws for the Plebs, a commission was sent to Greece to study the legislations of
Solon and other lawmakers and on their return, ten men (decemviri) formed a new code call "the Twelve
Tables" which were approved by the Assembly and became the rst written form of a legal structure of
Rome (450 B.C.), serving as the basic law for the next 900 years. In 443 B.C. appeared the institution of
censorship and in 432 the rst law designed to check electoral corruption was passed. At the end of the
century the long war of Rome against the Etruscan city, Veii in Tuscany was started. At the same time the
Gauls descended again from the north and the Etruscans were squeezed in the middle. (Ref. 4822 )
Pei (Ref. 16823 ) states that at 500 B.C. the Latin language was a rough, elemental tongue, lacking most
of the renement of syntax and vocabulary to come later.
The Greek Syracusans were busy through most of this century ghting and defending their possessions.
In the battle of Himera on the north Sicilian shore in 480 B.C. they defeated the Carthaginians and then
were able to dominate the western Mediterranean. We have noted above how they subsequently defeated
the Etruscan navy. In 414 B.C. the Athenians besieged Syracuse, but they too were defeated, their eet
destroyed and the survivors were taken as quarry slaves.
The Greek Empedocles, living in Sicily, developed a theory of the movement of blood to and from the
heart, and performed various medical "miracles". He is said to have raised a woman from the dead. Later,
Galen was to call him the Father of Italian medicine. (Ref. 2824 )
1.2 CENTRAL EUROPE
By 500 B.C. the greater part of the northern European coast was Germanic. The rst, or Germanic, sound
shift in the Aryan tongue created a dividing line between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages.
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Farther south the Germanic groups were still checked by Celts. From 500 or 450 B.C. onward is the age of
the La Tene Celtic Culture, named after excavation sites in the region of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland.
Corresponding to the Golden Age of Greece, there was a wave of Celtic expansion, with battles against
the cities of the classical world. They used two-wheeled chariots as cavalry in tactical units of three and
tribal foot soldiers armed with spears, slings and tall wooden shields decorated with metal bosses, but there
were no bows and arrows. The Switzerland Celts extracted tolls as they controlled the head of the Seine
navigation on the tin route from Britain to the bronze workshops of Italy. At that time the Rhineland had
already become important in iron ingot production. A reverse ow of Etruscan bronzes went back up the
river route and those art objects found in Germany, as well as in Belgium and Luxemburg, had denite
inuence on Celtic art. (Ref. 16825 , 19426 , 827 , 7528 )
Recent excavations at Hochdorf (near Stuttgart) in southwestern Germany indicate that the Celts of south
Germany had a stratied society with an aristocratic class that lived in hilltop fortresses. The wealth of that
class was based on trade links with Greek colonies in Italy and southern France and with the Etruscans.
The large tombs of the aristocrats were sometimes one hundred meters in diameter and held Mediterranean
drinking vessels, furniture and other household luxuries. The average life span at that time was about thirty
years. The Hallstatt culture existed in two great regions, one in the west with clear Celtic features and an
eastern one in Carinthia, the north Adriatic and Yugoslavia, which included the Illyrians and the Veneti.
1.3 WESTERN EUROPE
On the east coast of Spain and at Massilia on the Mediterranean coast of France there were Greek colonies,
but otherwise all France and the Atlantic coast was Gaulic (Celtic). These people also overran the basic
population of Ireland, bringing iron to that land as well as to Britain, where its use rapidly outstripped
bronze after 450 B.C. The Celts who arrived in Britain in this era were Brythonians, or P-Celtic speakers,
from the early La Tene Culture on the continent. (Ref. 4329 , 22230 )
On the North Sea between the Somme and Aller rivers, including present day Holland, northeastern
France, northwestern Germany and most of Denmark is an area where place- names still show remnants of
a language neither Celtic nor German. The Celts never got this far north and the Germans for a long time
were west of the Aller. A prehistoric people were apparently squeezed between the Celts and the Germans
in that location. (Ref. 831 )
1.4 SCANDINAVIA
In this century there was a true Iron Age in Scandinavia and a period of continued proliferation of Germanic
tribes, some of which were spilling over into Europe proper.
1.5 EASTERN EUROPE
The Finns and the Balts occupied the same respective territories as in the preceding century. In the Slav
zone of Poland a new fashion of decorating urns with faces replaced the old Lausitz style. This change
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appears to have spread southeastward from the Baltic. Areas of quite advanced civilization existed in the
Greek colonies on the Black Sea and at the Persian borders near the Caspian.
On the Russian steppe the Iranian tribes between the Don and the Aral Sea became known as the
Sarmatians while those farther west were Scythians, now becoming farmers. Southern Russia was both
cooler and more moist than earlier or than now and instead of the previously existing steppe country, by
500 B.C. wooded or partly wooded country extended from Romania east for one thousand miles to the
Don River. This tended to restrict nomadic foraging and raiding. It was in this century that Herodotus,
the Greek historian, visited Albia on the north shore of the Black Sea and wrote of the Scythians. (Ref.
9232 ) He mentioned that some of the Scythians grew grain, not for their own use, but for sale chiey to the
Greeks. East of these farmers were the largest and bravest of the Scythian tribes, reaching as far east as
the Don. They used large cow stomachs to hold thirty to forty gallons of water. It is said that the natives
of the Caucasus Mountains were still practicing cannibalism at this time. (Ref. 21533 )(Ref. 17634 ) (Ref.
9235 )(Ref. 21136 )(Ref. 21337 )
Forward to Europe 400 to 301 B.C.38
Choose Dierent Region
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Intro to Era39
Africa40
America41
Central and Northern Asia42
The Far East43
The Indian Subcontinent44
The Near East45
Pacic46
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40 "Africa: 500 to 401 B.C." <http://cnx.org/content/m17737/latest/>
41 "America: 500 to 401 B.C." <http://cnx.org/content/m17776/latest/>
42 "Central and Northern Asia: 500 to 401 B.C." <http://cnx.org/content/m17822/latest/>
43 "The Far East: 500 to 401 B.C." <http://cnx.org/content/m17899/latest/>
44 "The Indian Subcontinent: 500 to 401 B.C." <http://cnx.org/content/m17928/latest/>
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46 "The Pacic: A.D. 201 to 300" <http://cnx.org/content/m18014/latest/>
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